I am sure that all my readers are wondering where I have been for the past month or so. Was I trying to negotiate a settlement to a devastating conflict between two countries? Maybe I was experimenting with a new formula that would become the next hot energy drink. I might have been working out for a tryout with my beloved Bears. Many people think I’m lazy and took a nap instead of writing my blog. Not so. I have been working on my blog, between cat naps.
When I wasn’t napping, I managed to find time to take a trip to Michigan. My wife and I were there for a couple of weeks, and I have decided to share our journey with you. There will be a five-hour slide show accompanying this blog. What…wait. My IT Guy (my youngest son) informed me that due to technical issues, we will not be able to do the slide show. Did I hear him say he wanted to spare the readers from a long, boring slide show? Wish I could have done that when my mom used to pull out the slide projector.
This year, my wife and I went to my happy place, just like we do every July. I don’t think I have ever talked about this before. I hear those saying “thank goodness.” Too bad, here I go.
In 1963, my very large family went on a summer vacation to western Michigan. It was not our first. The year before, my dad took us to a lake in Wisconsin where he could go fishing. The cabin was small but very lovely, but the fishing was, at best, spotty. It was our first ever “Family Vacation.” There were nine of us total, not counting my youngest brother, who would be born a month later.
After his disappointment, the following year, my dad found a different resort, on a different lake, in a completely different state, and we were on our way for our second try. My youngest brother was now in tow as a baby, and my older brother was old enough to have a job. The nine of us were crammed into my dad’s 1962 Ford station wagon. It allegedly accommodated nine passengers, but the three back seats were sacrificed to pack luggage. That meant at least three of us kids rode in a prone position on top of the luggage. For those concerned about our comfort, never mind, those were the “cool” seats in the car. There were no seat belts back then anyway, so we would have been flying around inside the vehicle if there had been an accident. Maybe my parents weren’t that concerned since we had so many of us to spare.
Besides all the luggage forced into the back of the car, there was more carefully balanced on the top of the family wagon on two boards with suction cups, which was called a luggage rack. It was almost like we were heading west to settle the plains. It also looked like the beginning of The Beverly Hillbillies, except we didn’t have Granny strapped to the top, but one of my little brothers might have enjoyed the ride.
The drive from west of Chicago, through Indiana, and then up the western side of Michigan took eight hours on a good day. Now it takes only about five hours, depending on how screwed up the Frank Borman Expressway, named after the Indiana native who orbited the moon. His trip to the moon and back took less time than trying to travel these few miles of pot-holed concrete.
Our second family vacation was in 1963, 62 years ago. The resort we were booked into was on Bass Lake, a small lake located in western Michigan and connected to Lake Michigan by a very short and shallow channel. The channel is like a jungle, and every time I go through it in the boat, I feel like Humphrey Bogart in the movie The African Queen. Like Bogart, there were a few times I had to get out and pull the boat off a sand bar.
As our car pulled up, it was hard even to see the lake this “resort” was “allegedly” on. The cabin we were staying in was visible from the dirt road we entered on, but the other six cabins were buried in weeds taller than my dad. The only other visible structure was an old rickety, clapboard building, which was called the hotel. It was primarily used for storing junk rather than housing guests. Almost 100 years ago, it was an elegant hotel that was a destination spot. It also had a pier that went out into the lake with a dance hall at the end. Old photos from the turn of the last century showed patrons going to the hall with women in elegant dresses and men in tuxedos. The whole time I was there, everyone was wearing clothing suitable for cleaning fish, except on Sunday. That’s when all our families took over the tiny Catholic church in the local town. We always got there early, leaving the locals to take the standing room section.
My mom’s first reaction was to cry and insist that my father take us home. He talked her into staying the night, and we would head home tomorrow…and as they say, the rest is history. We did not head home the next day, and by the end of the week, my mom didn’t want to leave at all. Our extended family, in one form or another, has been going to Bass Lake, Michigan, for 62 years.
In the following years, my dad convinced his three brothers, each with families, to join us and occupy three other cabins. The one brother without a family, a priest, also joined us and stayed with the family with the fewest kids.
It was the highlight of every year, and my whole family, including my parents, always counted the days until we headed back up there, despite the weeds, broken-down cabins, and leaky boats. What would my summer be without bailing out a decades-old, steel rowboat while trying to fish? Hey, if the damn boats didn’t leak so much, I might have caught more fish.
Claude, who owned the place for the first seven or eight years we were there, never cleared the weeds or made the necessary repairs. However, he did spend a lot of time chatting with my mom over coffee while we were there.
Claude was an interesting character. He was a large man, over six feet tall, and well past 300 lbs. He always wore a beat-up, old baseball cap, bib overalls, and was always two weeks unshaven. He wore a pair of long underwear under the bib overalls. He could have been the sidekick of Roy Rogers or Gene Autry. He always had a story to tell, and he was willing to sacrifice a day of his duties to share it with anyone willing to give him a cup of coffee. As a result, our families did much of the work that needed to be done, which earned us a discount on the rental fee. We chopped weeds, installed the dock, and attempted to get the old steel boats to float and the engines to run. Wow, what summer fun.
We had so much fun on our vacation that this will be part one of a two-part article, or as my wife called it, I don’t know when to shut up.
Don’t miss the exciting conclusion to What I Did On My Summer Vacation…at least I didn’t make it a cliff hanger like they do on those television series. Did B.B.Riley catch that trophy bass or not? Did his wife finally drill a hole in his boat so it would sink with him in it? Did their annual end-of-vacation fish fry end up at the nearest seafood restaurant because of their hopeless fishing ability? Stayed tune.
Until then, TTFN.
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